Global CCM market size was worth USD16.247 billion in 2015, a year-on-year rise of 3.8% from 2014, the slowest rate since 2010. It is expected that growth rate will continue to decelerate in 2016, only 1.3%, but bounce back slightly to 1.6% in 2017 with a market size of USD16.732 billion.

There were several reasons for slowdown. First, the world was plagued by high deflation rates and currencies like Japanese yen, Korean won and NTD depreciated greatly. Second, the mobile phone market slowed and has become almost saturated. Smartphone market can still maintain the expansion in 2015 and may be afraid to be flat or start declining in 2016. Third, the competition, especially that in Chinese mainland market, was intense. Despite continued upgrading of CCM pixel (mostly 13M pixels for rear CCM), the ASP didn’t rise but slip down. As more and more vendors enter the CCM field with OIS and high-performance AF, a price plunge is inevitable.

In CIS field, shipments are expected to amount to 4,196 million units in 2015 and 4,390 million units in 2016, up 8.8% and 4.6% against the previous year, respectively, compared with annual growth of 11.5% in 2014, indicating a further slowdown. The market size is predicted to be USD9.16 billion in 2015 and USD9.628 billion in 2016, a year-on-year rise of 4.6% and 5.1%, respectively, compared with annual increase of 10.7% in 2014. Except for On-Semi, Sony and Sharp, all other vendors experienced declines. Sony acquired Toshiba’s CIS business, further consolidating its hegemony and its first place by performance, and will keep growing rapidly in 2016. On-Semi is a bellwether in automotive CIS field, seizing nearly 50% market share. As integration went well very after acquisition of Aptina by On-Semi, combined with explosive growth in automotive camera market, On-Semi embraced rapid development in its CIS business, and is expected to record revenue of USD720 million in 2015, including USD400 million from automotive field, a surge of more than 100%.

Bi-Direction and Close-Loop have become two main technologies in VCM field. Japanese vendors exited from low-end VCM field and focused on OIS or Bi-Direction and Close-Loop. The emergence of mainland Chinese companies in low-end market resulted in fierce competition.

In an increasingly competitive CCM field, the majority of companies were caught in the price war and the market became more concentrated. Many vendors registered higher shipments but smaller revenue, even the number of pixel increased. Sharp, performing the best, became the second largest supplier for Apple that placed more orders with Sharp so as to reduce its reliance on LG-INNOTEK, but LG-INNOTECK was still the largest supplier for Apple and ranked first by revenue globally. Cowell, the third largest supplier for Apple, also did very well, and was one of few companies with improved gross margin. SEMCO won more orders from Samsung. Sunny Optical, the No. 1 mainland Chinese vendor, maintained the momentum of strong growth but with a stagnant gross margin, and started shifting its focus to Lens field in the hope of raising its overall growth margin. LITEON selectively gave up low-end business and saw a decline in orders from its major customer Samsung, leading to a collapse in revenue. MCNEX found strong growth in revenue by relying on automotive business.